"And hold fast, all of you together, to the Rope of Allâh, and be not divided among yourselves, and remember Allâh's Favour on you, for you were enemies one to another but He joined your hearts together, so that, by His Grace, you became brethren (in Islâmic Faith), and you were on the brink of a pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus Allâh makes His Ayât (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.,) clear to you, that you may be guided." (Ali Imran: 103)

So Allah gave a 2nd chance, when we were on the brink of a pit of Hell.

A poem we learnt back in MRSM said

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."

And what a difference indeed. All the words in the world could not describe the joy of living in the light of islam, and the peace that it brings. When we occupy ourselves with work, with toys, with money, it never lasts. The workload will always increase. Toys become damaged. Money runs out.

But Allah never sleeps and he never tires. He's always there when the work gets too stressful, the things go bust and the money runs out, eventhough we never remember him before that.

So on "200th post day", i hope that these tiny efforts bring a difference to your lives also. These are tiny efforts, but collectively - there are lots of brilliant D&T bloggers and out there, and even people who don't have blogs but are super-brilliant - we are like a pounding river.

p/s: i don't know how the name 'reflective perspectives' was chosen, even before 'the 180-degree turn'..coincidence? but nothing is.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Different people will look at different things with different light, depending on how you view the world.

Let's take a simple object, for example a tree.

A profit-oriented capitalist will say

"Hey look! Let's cut down that tree and make paper. We'll get lots of money for that."

A communist will say

"Comrade! That tree, if we sell it to the capitalist, we'll get money to distribute evenly amongst all our comrades."

An environmentalist will say

"What profits?? That tree is home to all the birds and squirrels. Cut me down first before you cut this tree."

How about us? I mean, i don't know about you, but i hope that after following this blog for a while, you'll get some idea of how to look at things with the light of islam.

"That tree, it is a creation of Allah, and it brings shade for those who sit underneath it. It drops fruit when people throw it with stones. When the lumberjack cuts it down, he sells it to feed his family. The paper from the tree is used to write down knowledge. So much benefits from a thing that could not even move. We humans move a lot, talk a lot, yet what do we give to the world. Allah is magnificent."

How do you look at things?

p/s: I like this poster..its a great illustrator of how we see things.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

A concerted and intensive action to create a new revolution and rid the world once and for all of injustice!

i exaggerate, but yes, we do have a chance to take action.

basically yeah, in the UK now there's a huge ongoing effort to petition against the extradition to the US of Babar Ahmad, a UK citizen accused of (what else)? But here's the thing. He has been imprisoned for 7 years without any trial, and we thought only malaysia does these things. He is, at 7 years, the longest prisoner detained without trial in the UK.

In our khutbah at LSE today, we were told about the situation of Babar Ahmad. The evidence provided against him is insufficient to charge him in the UK, so they are trying to put him on trial in the US. And if found guilty, he will be sent to a Supermax prison into a solitary cell, where he won't be permitted to meet other prisoners, is only allowed 1 hour outside, and will only get 15 minutes to talk to his family once per month.

And the worst part is, during his first arrest he was subjected to abuse and torture, and one of it was being forced to go into the sujood position, while the police taunted him with cries of "Where is your God now?"

So, our part. If we can get 100,000 signatures before 10/11/2011, the parliament will rediscuss his case and hopefully he will get a fair trial in the UK, and not be subject to further unfair detention. this petition is especially for people currently in the UK.